


Rebirth

by cricket_aria



Category: Star Ocean: Till the End of Time
Genre: M/M, Plucky Space Rebels With Stars In Their Eyes and Hope In Their Hearts, Running Away, Unethical Science, rebooting the universe doesn't fix everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 01:02:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21027683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/pseuds/cricket_aria
Summary: Fayt can handle his not-quite-captivity on Klaus III, but the days when the scientists come to see him are the worst.





	Rebirth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Exile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/gifts).

> Heavily inspired by their ending scene together, so if you haven't watched it in awhile you can brush up on it [here on youtube](https://youtu.be/BHBlpByWhOQ) if you'd like.

Klaus III wasn’t a bad place to be kept in not-quite captivity. The fact that he had to basically always remain in buildings and shuttles with the gravity artificially lightened meant that he was left more-or-less to himself, no need for guards when the world itself would do its best to crush him if he ever tried to slip away. He had anything he could want for food and entertainment, and Cliff was almost constantly in the home they’d given him to give him company.

The days people on the political side of things stopped by to grill him were fine. They all thought he was completely nuts when he talked about the 4D world, and were frustrated when they finally accepted that he was telling the truth when he claimed he had no idea where Maria was, and once those two things had been well-established their meetings became fairly inoffensive. A way of making sure he didn’t forget that they were keeping him around as a pawn, more than anything, and to show the rest of the galaxy that their hero was alive and well any time he said anything they thought was interesting or entertaining enough to release a clip of the recordings from one of their interviews with him to the news feeds. He could tell they were losing interest in him as the bureaucrats who came became lower and lower in rank, but didn’t mind that the visits had yet to taper off completely.

The days with the scientists were the worse ones. Sophia’s father, the only person left who knew the original work that had been done on Fayt and the others, tried to be there when he could, and as long as he was it was fine. He believed Fayt when he said the powers they’d given him as a baby no longer functioned, and only wanted to make sure that he was still fine even with his connection to the 4D world cut off. But Fayt suspected that they’d stopped letting Clive know when most of their sessions would be occurring, because their schedule became less regular and he was never there on the odd days.

The days he wasn’t there, that’s when they started pushing things further. Taking more excessive blood samples than Clive ever asked for, and tissue samples. Sometimes they brought in monsters for him to fight, documenting the skills he used, how strong he was compared to human norms, how much energy he exerted. They shoved him under all manner of machines, and shoved bottles of he didn’t even know what all down his throat and into his veins and documented what they did to him. Then they’d heal up anything major enough to be noticeable to anyone visiting, asked him not to use any magic on smaller injuries they left untreated so they could keep track of his natural healing abilities between sessions, and let him go.

He put up with it because they never did anything that he thought went too far, and, mostly really, because Maria was still out there. Sophia had the safety of having her father close by and of still being considered a failure by anyone else who even knew that she’d been part of the experiments, but Maria was an orphan and a criminal and if she was found Fayt didn’t think they’d stop with tests she could walk away from that same day. And if he didn’t play along then he was pretty sure they’d start making a lot more effort to find her.

He was so used to viewing them as a fairly benign, if wildly unethical, part of his life that when a session with them ended with one of the women saying “We just have one more thing we want to do today” and holding up a syringe he’d given her his arm without thinking to question it until the sudden burst of wariness hit him. He fumbled for his communicator, trying to hit the button that would contact Cliff, but he couldn’t even tell if his numbing fingers had been able to put any pressure on it before they lost their grasp completely and it fell away somewhere. The woman smiled sweetly at him as his vision faded, and gently said, “Don’t worry, Fayt, we can’t have you awake for this one, but we’ll have you up and about in no time.”

That was the last thing he heard before everything went black.

* * *

He woke up to the comfortable hum of a space shuttle around him. There was a crick in his neck and his arm was asleep from sleeping at an awkward angle in the seat he was strapped down in, but the binding was the familiar weight of a safety harness and when he raised one heavy arm to his stomach he could feel the release clasp right where it should be. It was a struggle to get his eyes to open, but when he did he flopped his head to the side and saw Cliff, his jaw tight and than hand closest to Fayt clenching at his armrest to tightly that Fayt could see the metal starting to buckle in. 

“Cliff? What happened?” he asked, around a tongue that felt thick and dry. Then something else struck him and he added, “Why does my head feel cold?” He raised a sluggish hand to his scalp, and felt smooth skin where hair should have been.

There was a groan of metal giving way as Cliff’s fingers sank a little further into the armrest. “Those absolute _bastards_,” he spat out instead of any sort of answer. “When I think about what would have happened if I’d just written that call off as a mistake instead of thinking what was going on in the background sounded funny and been even a minute later… the bastards already had their saws out, all ‘We’re just taking a sample, Mr. Fittir, it’s fine,’ like what they were doing was _nothing_.”

In spite of Cliff’s apparent inability to get out anything but outrage, Fayt put together an idea of what must have happened. He closed his eyes again and tiredly said, “I should have known they’d try to get brain tissue samples at some point. But you’d think they would have asked first.”

His eyes were startled open again at the heavy thunk of Cliff punching the wall of the shuttle. “Should have _known_?” he repeated back, and finally turned from the control panel in front of him to look at Fayt. His eyes were filled with a mix of fury and terror as he reached out to grab up Fayt’s hand. “Fayt, you know those bastards always assured everyone they were just giving you health check-ups, right? They were only supposed to make sure getting cut off from the other world wasn’t going to hurt you, not… whatever the hell they were up to. I swear, I have half a mind to go grab Albel, throw him at the lot of them, and tell him to go wild with them. They’d think the way I treated them was a dream in comparison.”

“But Cliff, Maria,” Fayt argued. “If they don’t have me they’re going to work harder to find her. She’ll be treated a lot worse.”

“Is that what they told you?” Cliff asked, somehow sounding even more enraged than ever at the thought of them holding the girl he’d helped raise as a threat over Fayt’s head. “Fayt, she has Mirage with her and they’ve had months now to find somewhere to hide and burrow in deep. We were rebels for years, we know how to hide.” Then he let his head drop back and huffed out a bitter laugh. “Are rebels again, I guess. I can’t believe I was dumb enough to think the new government would be better than the old one. Shows what an idiot I am, thinking a little thing like the universe being destroyed and recreated would get them all to pull their heads out of their asses.”

“I think it might just have been the scientists themselves, not the government,” Fayt told him, aware that Cliff had been settling back into a life on his homeworld that would be completely thrown out the window if Quark was reborn. “If you held off on the rebelling and watched it might okay, you might not need to leave home again.”

“Nah, when they see the state I left a roomful of their top scientists in I’ll be a wanted man again anyway,” Cliff responded, the rage in his voice lightening up a bit to let in some of his usual humor. “Anyway, you think I was hanging around there because I had a craving for the simple life? I stayed because you were stuck there, but there’s no way I’m letting them get their hands on you again.” His hand squeezed Fayt’s harder, almost tight enough to hurt though Fayt knew the fact that it wasn’t showed that Cliff was being incredibly careful with his strength. “So, rebellion it is,” he added.

“I thought you said it would be naive of me to think the government would just leave me alone,” he said, but found himself smiling at how set Cliff was on staying with him and protecting him no matter what.

“Nothing’s changed there. You think they leave Quark alone either? I can’t promise you that going on the run’ll be a barrel of roses, but I’ll be right by your side all the way and the rest of Quark won’t be far behind when they get the clue from us taking off. And one thing I can swear to you is that out there no bastards are gonna try to _saw open your head._” He lifted his free hand and moved it in a sweeping gesture towards the cockpit window, pulling Fayt’s attention to the vast field of stars in front of them and the freedom they offered. “So, what do you say, feel like being a rebel?”

Fayt let himself relax, shifting his hand in Cliff’s until instead of just being clenched at he could link their fingers together, and slowly her started to smile. “Okay. Yeah. As of here and now let’s call Quark reborn.”


End file.
